There has been a great deal of research published on foster youth’s perspectives regarding their relationships with foster parents, their experiences within the foster care system, and their longing for their biological parents. Limited research exists on foster parents’ experiences with the foster care system. More recently, foster parents have been asked to engage in the concurrent planning process, in which social workers work towards reunifying foster youth with their biological families, while at the same time planning for long-term, alternative placement in case reunification is not possible. The child welfare system depends on foster parents to care for and possibly be a long-term permanent placement for foster youth, yet we have little knowledge of foster parents’ experiences with concurrent planning and whether it impacts the foster parents’ ability to bond with foster youth. This is a quantitative study, which uses survey questionnaires developed by the researcher to explore foster parents’ experiences with concurrent planning and their self-reported experiences with bonding to foster youth. The survey was sent to 107 licensed foster parents at two Southern California foster family agencies using Qualtrics. The results of the survey questionnaires were documented in Qualtrics and a statistical analysis was conducted using SPSS Version 2.1. The foster parent participants in this study reported a range of experiences related to concurrent planning. Some reported receiving explicit training on the process from their social workers, while others received little to no information on concurrent planning. The study found a strong, positive correlation between the level of training and education participants received and their overall perceptions of the concurrent planning process. The study also explored relationship between the age of the foster child and the placement status of the foster child with the foster parent’s reported bonding to the child. The study found a small, positive correlation between the age of the child and the foster parents’ reported bonding. Similarly, the study’s findings suggest that foster parents with permanent placement youth report slightly higher levels of bonding with the youth than those with family reunification cases; however, this finding was not statistically significantly. This study’s findings suggest the need for more research regarding foster parents’ experiences working with concurrent planning and with the child welfare system in general. This study suggests that factors such as foster parent experiences, as well as foster youths’ characteristics, may play a role in bonding between foster parents and foster youth. These factors should be further explored to provide the best chance for children to develop strong, lasting relationships with their foster parents that may lead to permanency. Understanding foster parents’ experiences may provide insight on the kinds of support, education, and training child welfare agencies should provide for foster parents who serve as such crucial resources for the child welfare system and the children it serves.

Perseverative conversation is a problem vocal behavior that is unique to individuals with Asperger's disorder. It is characterized by long-winded monologues revolving around circumscribed interests. The current research literature suggests that perseverative conversation may exacerbate already poor social relations, impede productivity at work and home, and lead to disruptive behavior when it is restricted. Despite the negative repercussions there is a lack of research related to the assessment and treatment of this behavior. In the field of applied behavior analysis, concurrent operants assessments have been used effectively to identify relative preference for concurrently available reinforcers. In the current study, choice assessments using concurrent operants arrangements were used to evaluate the reinforcing properties of perseverative conversation in children and adolescents with Asperger's disorder. Five participants, all with Asperger's disorder and reported difficulties with perseverative conversation, were assessed in three phases: A preference assessment for conversation topics; an assessment of preference for reinforcer dimensions; and an assessment of preference for competing dimensions. In the first phase a two-stage preference assessment separated high-preferred from less-preferred conversation topics and in the second and third phases participants were asked to make choices regarding their preference for conversation content, conversational style, and conversation duration. Phase II results suggested that participants preferred conversing about their respective circumscribed interests over neutral topics, actively conversing rather than listening, and conversing for longer duration rather than shorter duration. Phase III, which assessed relative preference for the three reinforcer dimensions, resulted in a hierarchy of preference for all but one participant. Two participants demonstrated the strongest preference for conversation content and two participants demonstrated the strongest preference for conversational style. Conversation duration was least preferred by four of the five participants. Perseverative conversation occurred at a relatively high rate across all assessment phases. The results are discussed in terms of current theoretical explanations for perseverative thinking and behavior, implications for treatment, and future research of this problem vocal behavior.

Students may avoid working on difficult tasks because it takes them longer to complete those tasks, which results in a delay to reinforcement. Research studies show that reinforcer and response dimensions can be manipulated within a concurrent operants framework to bias choice allocation toward more difficult tasks. The current study extends previous literature on concurrent choice assessments by examining the effects of reinforcement schedules and fluency interventions on the choice allocation between low and high effort math tasks. The study was conducted with 4 second graders in an elementary school. The choice assessment conducted prior to fluency training (Phase 1) examined the effects of enriching the reinforcement schedule for the high effort tasks on student choice. During fluency training (Phase 2), strategies to increase fluency rates on high effort tasks were implemented. The choice assessment following fluency training (Phase 3) examined changes in choice pattern when the same choice alternatives were available as in Phase 1. A concurrent schedules with reversal design was used to identify student response allocation to tasks under different reinforcement conditions during the choice assessments. The fluency training phase was conducted as a case study design. The three important findings of this study were: (a) prior to fluency training, the 4 students allocated more time to low effort tasks when equal reinforcement was provided for both types of math tasks; the students then shifted to high effort tasks as the reinforcement schedule was enriched for these tasks; (b) fluency training strategies were effective in increasing the rate at which high effort tasks were accurately completed; and (c) all 4 students switched more quickly to high effort tasks following fluency training. Implications for educators are discussed.

Concurrent engineering is an imperative concept in the world of product development. With the globalisation of industry, the market has been demanding higher quality products at lower costs, delivered at faster pace. With most companies today accepting the concurrent engineering approach as a formula for product development success, this approach is becoming ever more popular and dominating over the slower sequential product development method. Fast changes in technology, forced design cycle time reduction, emergence of new information technology and methodologies, as well as other aspects such as organisational and behavioural basis caused the sequential design process to progress into a concurrent engineering approach. The basic concept behind the concurrent engineering approach is that all parts of the design, manufacture, production, management, finance, and marketing of the product are usually involved in the early stages of a product’s design cycle, enabling faster product development through extensive use of simulation. Its key approach is to get the right data for the right person at the right time. There are forces that govern changes in the product development, and these forces must be steered towards prompt response to competition and higher productivity in order for companies to exist and successfully expand in the global market place. Concurrent engineering is made up of four key dimensions, one of them the communication infrastructure dimension, which is the focus of this study. This study defines the information infrastructure dimension, and some of the tools and technologies that support communication and collaboration. It then discusses how to employ the concurrent engineering approach from a communication infrastructure dimension point of view, starting with assessing the current product development process and eventually envisioning the path to take to a successful concurrent engineering environment. Communication infrastructure technologies and tools can be seen as central to a company’s implementation of concurrent engineering, as shown in the case studies covered in this work.

Concurrent engineering is an imperative concept in the world of product development. With the globalisation of industry, the market has been demanding higher quality products at lower costs, delivered at faster pace. With most companies today accepting the concurrent engineering approach as a formula for product development success, this approach is becoming ever more popular and dominating over the slower sequential product development method. Fast changes in technology, forced design cycle time reduction, emergence of new information technology and methodologies, as well as other aspects such as organisational and behavioural basis caused the sequential design process to progress into a concurrent engineering approach. The basic concept behind the concurrent engineering approach is that all parts of the design, manufacture, production, management, finance, and marketing of the product are usually involved in the early stages of a product’s design cycle, enabling faster product development through extensive use of simulation. Its key approach is to get the right data for the right person at the right time. There are forces that govern changes in the product development, and these forces must be steered towards prompt response to competition and higher productivity in order for companies to exist and successfully expand in the global market place. Concurrent engineering is made up of four key dimensions, one of them the communication infrastructure dimension, which is the focus of this study. This study defines the information infrastructure dimension, and some of the tools and technologies that support communication and collaboration. It then discusses how to employ the concurrent engineering approach from a communication infrastructure dimension point of view, starting with assessing the current product development process and eventually envisioning the path to take to a successful concurrent engineering environment. Communication infrastructure technologies and tools can be seen as central to a company’s implementation of concurrent engineering, as shown in the case studies covered in this work.

Concurrent engineering is an imperative concept in the world of product development. With the globalisation of industry, the market has been demanding higher quality products at lower costs, delivered at faster pace. With most companies today accepting the concurrent engineering approach as a formula for product development success, this approach is becoming ever more popular and dominating over the slower sequential product development method. Fast changes in technology, forced design cycle time reduction, emergence of new information technology and methodologies, as well as other aspects such as organisational and behavioural basis caused the sequential design process to progress into a concurrent engineering approach. The basic concept behind the concurrent engineering approach is that all parts of the design, manufacture, production, management, finance, and marketing of the product are usually involved in the early stages of a product’s design cycle, enabling faster product development through extensive use of simulation. Its key approach is to get the right data for the right person at the right time. There are forces that govern changes in the product development, and these forces must be steered towards prompt response to competition and higher productivity in order for companies to exist and successfully expand in the global market place. Concurrent engineering is made up of four key dimensions, one of them the communication infrastructure dimension, which is the focus of this study. This study defines the information infrastructure dimension, and some of the tools and technologies that support communication and collaboration. It then discusses how to employ the concurrent engineering approach from a communication infrastructure dimension point of view, starting with assessing the current product development process and eventually envisioning the path to take to a successful concurrent engineering environment. Communication infrastructure technologies and tools can be seen as central to a company’s implementation of concurrent engineering, as shown in the case studies covered in this work.

Concurrent engineering is an imperative concept in the world of product development. With the globalisation of industry, the market has been demanding higher quality products at lower costs, delivered at faster pace. With most companies today accepting the concurrent engineering approach as a formula for product development success, this approach is becoming ever more popular and dominating over the slower sequential product development method. Fast changes in technology, forced design cycle time reduction, emergence of new information technology and methodologies, as well as other aspects such as organisational and behavioural basis caused the sequential design process to progress into a concurrent engineering approach. The basic concept behind the concurrent engineering approach is that all parts of the design, manufacture, production, management, finance, and marketing of the product are usually involved in the early stages of a product’s design cycle, enabling faster product development through extensive use of simulation. Its key approach is to get the right data for the right person at the right time. There are forces that govern changes in the product development, and these forces must be steered towards prompt response to competition and higher productivity in order for companies to exist and successfully expand in the global market place. Concurrent engineering is made up of four key dimensions, one of them the communication infrastructure dimension, which is the focus of this study. This study defines the information infrastructure dimension, and some of the tools and technologies that support communication and collaboration. It then discusses how to employ the concurrent engineering approach from a communication infrastructure dimension point of view, starting with assessing the current product development process and eventually envisioning the path to take to a successful concurrent engineering environment. Communication infrastructure technologies and tools can be seen as central to a company’s implementation of concurrent engineering, as shown in the case studies covered in this work.

La Programmation Concurrente par Contraintes (CCP) est un modèle mathématique pour la spécification de systèmes concurrents où les agents (processus) ajoutent de l'information ou interrogent si certains faits peuvent être déduits. Dans ce modèle, l'information est représentée par un ensemble de contraintes. La Programmation Temporelle Concourante par Contraintes (tcc) est un extension de CCP où l'exécution des processus a lieu dans des intervalles de temps. Ce mémoire étudie tcc en tant que modèle concurrent pour les systèmes mobiles et développe le calcul de processus utcc, Universal Temporal CCP. La thèse proposée est qu'utcc est un modèle concurrent où les techniques comportementales et déclaratives peuvent être utilisées pour la spécification et la vérification des systèmes concurrents. La calcul utcc généralise tcc en permettant la possibilité de spécifier la mobilité. Ici le terme mobilité est compris comme la possibilité de communiquer des variables ou des canaux locaux comme dans le cas du pi-calcul. Utcc introduit un opérateur "ask" paramétrique que nous appelons "abstraction". Cet opérateur est persistent pendant un intervalle de temps et il disparaît au moment de passer à l'intervalle de temps suivant. Nous présentons l'utilisation d'utcc dans plusieurs domaines: Nous prouvons l'incomplétude de la logique temporelle de Pnueli, nous modélisons et vérifions des protocoles de sécurité et des systèmes dynamique d'interaction multimédia et nous donnons une sémantique déclarative à un langage pour le web-services.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze relevant dimensions of cooperation between design and production related to product development. The study also focuses on suggesting improvements of the co-operation dimensions between production departments and the product development departments in the Product Development Process (PDP) at Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB (SIT AB). SIT AB produces gas and steam turbines. Their increasing production pace and increasing number of product development projects have highlighted the importance of improved co-operations between departments within the company.</p><p>We have developed an analysis model including the dimensions of co-operation we found relevant for the study. These are Timing of Upstream – Downstream Activities; Richness & Quality of Information; Frequency of Information Transmission; Direction of Communication; Formalization of Communication; Organizational Support; Goal Optimization; Attitudes in Cross-functional Teams; and Understanding of Tasks.</p><p>For product development SIT AB follows an extensive process; the PDP. This is a sequential process where all activities are performed in sequence and therefore it obstructs the implementation of Concurrent Engineering. Concurrent Engineering aims to shorten development time and to consider the total job as a whole by performing independent activities in parallel. Hence, we argue that SIT AB should work toward a more integrated process with more parallel activities.</p><p>The performance in all the dimensions of co-operation differ between large and small projects since the co-operation in large projects work much better than in small projects due to better followed process description; more face-to-face discussions; a better balance between informal and formal communication; and more focus on project goals and team building.</p><p>The improvement proposals are presented in a separate chapter as actions classified according to the potential impact on the organization and the estimated difficulty to implement them. The proposals include for example: training more project managers; initiate work shop practice for design engineers; and give more and better explanations of decisions and actions.</p> / <p>Syftet med det här examensarbetet är att identifiera och analysera relevanta dimensioner av samarbete mellan produktion och konstruktion i samband med produktutveckling. Syftet är också att föreslå förbättringar i samarbetet mellan produktions- och konstruktionsavdelningarna i produktutvecklingsprocessen (PDP) på Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB (SIT AB). SIT AB producerar ång- och gasturbiner. Betydelsen av ett gott samarbete mellan avdelningar i organisationen har belysts i samband med att produktionstaken de senaste åren har ökat och fler produktutvecklingsprojekt har initierat.</p><p>Vi har utvecklat en analysmodell som innehåller de dimensioner av samarbete som vi anser är relevanta för området. Dessa är: timing av uppströms – nedströms aktiviteter, rikhet & kvalitet på information, frekvens av informationsöverföring, riktning på kommunikation, formalisering av kommunikation, organisatoriskt support, måloptimering, attityder i tvärfunktionella team samt förståelse för uppgifter.</p><p>Vid produktutveckling följer SIT AB den omfattande processen PDP. PDP är en sekventiell process där alla aktiviteter utförs i en sekvens vilket motverkar implementeringen av Concurrent Engineering. Concurrent Engineering syftar till att korta utvecklingstiden för produkter och beakta arbetet ur ett helhetsperspektiv bland annat genom utförande av oberoende aktiviteter parallellt. Därför anser vi att SIT AB ska arbeta mot en mer integrerad process med fler parallella aktiviteter.</p><p>Det är stor skillnad på prestationen i samarbetsdimensionerna mellan stora och små projekt. Stora projekt fungerar mycket bättre än små vilket kan relateras till att stora projekt följer processbeskrivningarna bättre, har en bättre balans mellan informell och formell kommunikation, och fokuserar mer på projektmål och sammansvetsade projektgrupper. Förbättringsförslagen är presenterade som konkreta åtgärder i ett separat kapitel och är klassificerade med hänsyn till varje förslags potentiella effekt på organisationen och dess uppskattade svårighetsgrad att implementera. Förslagen är bland annat att utbilda fler projektledare, inrätta verkstadspraktik för konstruktörer och ge fler och bättre förklaringar till beslut och handlingar.</p>

This paper presents a concurrent interpreter for a general-purpose concurrent logic programming language, Guarded Horn Clauses (GHC). Unlike typical implementations of GHC in logic programming languages, the interpreter is implemented in the Actor language Acore. The primary motivation for this work was to probe the strengths and weaknesses of Acore as a platform for developing sophisticated programs. The GHC interpreter provided a rich testbed for exploring Actor programming methodology. The interpreter is a pedagogical investigation of the mapping of GHC constructs onto the Actor model. Since we opted for simplicity over optimization, the interpreter is somewhat inefficient.